TracyB wrote:I have one story to add to your thread. One of her older cousins is a friend of mine. I saw Cortnee a couple times but she was about 11-12 years old at the time. She told me about it about a week after it happened and I was shocked. It devastated her family. No one really saw it coming.

Cortnee Eastman

March 24, 2000 - July 27, 2015 15 Years Old

COLUMBUS, Ind. (AP) - Shannon Eastman remembers her daughter, the youngest of her children, as a bright, vibrant, talented athlete who was determined and a fighter.

Never did she think her daughter Cortnee would die by suicide at age 15.

“Suicide is the hardest thing,” she said. “It’s not like a car accident that can’t be prevented. Suicide can be prevented.”

It’s been slightly more than a month since Cortnee died, and Shannon Eastman is attempting to reach out to her daughter’s friends, members of her cheerleading team and others to help Columbus teens who might be struggling.

Public speaking isn’t something that comes easily to her, but she’s trying to speak individually and with small groups about Cortnee’s death.

“I’m telling them, first of all, at their age - being a young adult - they are going through many emotions,” she said. “You might feel at the lowest point, but that’s when you need to call someone or go take a walk with someone.”

She has been telling teens, if they ever get into a place where thoughts of suicide enter their mind, to talk to someone, she said.

“There are so many people who love you,” she said. “You need to call someone. You need to know it will get better.”

She still wishes Cortnee would have called someone or turned to some sort of exercise or an activity in the 20 minutes that the family believes her thoughts turned to suicide.

Cortnee would spend hours in the gym perfecting a skill for cheerleading, and her coach described her as a fighter, her mother said.

At times, Cortnee asked to stay at the gym just a little bit longer to practice.

“That’s why it hurts so bad,” her mother said. “She just gave up so easily. She was so mentally strong, and it’s hard to accept she got in a weak moment.”

Her mother said she believes her daughter’s death was over the ending of a relationship.

“She got caught up with a boy. And it was definitely in that moment, the lowest point,” she said. “That’s not who Cortnee is or Cortnee was.”

Cortnee’s friend Abby Hiatt said she couldn’t tell anything was wrong with Cortnee, other than her friend was sad about a breakup.

In the first days of school, many people were talking about Cortnee’s death and wanting to know the why of it, Abby said.

“I don’t think anyone can know the real reason except for the person who did it,” Abby said.

Cortnee’s mother said she feels something snapped in her daughter’s head.

“She was deeply in love,” her mother said. “But it’s a phase of life. Most of the people who date in high school don’t stay together. But at that point in life, they don’t realize that.”

Shannon Eastman did know that Cortnee had mentioned suicide to the boy involved in the breakup. He had told his mother, who called Eastman to let her know about the conversation, she said.

Cortnee’s parents were watching her closely for about a week before her death.

But Cortnee pushed her parents away when they asked how they could help, asking to be left alone, her mother said.

“Most kids are not going to talk to their parents,” she said. “That’s the hardest thing - they don’t want to let people know and they will push you away. Never in a million years did I think she was thinking about this. She hid it very well. Every sign I saw was that of a typical teenager.”

Shannon Eastman hasn’t changed anything in Cortnee’s room since her death, except to take some things to the girl’s funeral.

Now she finds herself wandering through stores that her daughter frequented and momentarily senses a need to buy a particular item for Cortnee.

“It’s very hard when it comes to that,” she said. “We were just together so much.”

A gymnast. A basketball player. A cheerleader who had competed at Nationals. Obliterated...over a guy.

My friend told me that her funeral was the worst experience of her life. She was traumatized by it. Everyone was just drowning in tears. Adults, teens, little kids. She said they shouldn't have had an open casket because it made it so much worse for everyone. Too real although maybe that was the point. She also said if Cortnee could've seen the emotional impact her death had on everyone, she never would've went through with it.

It doesn't say it in the article but I know she hung herself shortly after posting a final pic on Instagram with a message aimed at her ex boyfriend.

Here's her final photo:

good find!

feel free to add to that thread

if you've not already done so i recommend watching Final Destination.

i've discovered photos tend to disappear from blog posts so i usually click the host image button which is to the left of insert image, it's more work but photos disappear after time.

it's hard for me to imagine a girl as good looking as Cortnee Eastman couldn't just find another boyfriend

it's hard for me to imagine a girl as good looking as Cortnee Eastman couldn't just find another boyfriend

Yeah it's crazy.

A typical response to such a breakup in high school would be for her to immediately hook up with another guy and rub it in her ex BF's face, and then quickly forget you were even with him. Life goes on. She let her world crumble over her first real boyfriend.

I love the Final Destination films. I own all of them. Second one is my favorite.

It really is an epidemic now. Almost every week you see something about ATV accidents.

I could've been a statistic in college. It was during a summer trip to Busch Gardens. We wound up at a party and later that night, a couple ATV's were brought out and they were giving rides. I took a ride and they were going way too fast. Yeah it was fun but so much could've went wrong. We had been drinking too. Young people, booze, and guys trying to impress is a recipe for disaster.